t," said the Mugger, with a
deep sigh. "He was very small, but I have not forgotten. I am old now,
but before I die it is my desire to try one new thing. It is true they
are a heavy-footed, noisy, and foolish people, and the sport would be
small, but I remember the old days above Benares, and, if the child
lives, he will remember still. It may be he goes up and down the bank
of some river, telling how he once passed his hands between the teeth of
the Mugger of Mugger-Ghaut, and lived to make a tale of it. My Fate has
been very kind, but that plagues me sometimes in my dreams--the thought
of the little white child in the bows of that boat." He yawned, and
closed his jaws. "And now I will rest and think. Keep silent, my
children, and respect the aged."

He turned stiffly, and shuffled to the top of the sand-bar, while the
Jackal drew back with the Adjutant to the shelter of a tree stranded on
the end nearest the railway bridge.

"That was a pleasant and profitable life," he grinned, looking up
inquiringly at the bird who towered above him. "And not once, mark you,
did he think fit to tell me where a morsel might have been left along
the banks. Yet I have told HIM a hundred times of good things wallowing
down-stream. How true is the saying, 'All the world forgets the Jackal
and the Barber when the news has been told!' Now he is going to sleep!
Arrh!"

"How can a jackal hunt with a Mugger?" said the Adjutant coolly. "Big
thief and little thief; it is easy to say who gets the pickings."

The Jackal turned, whining impatiently, and was going to curl himself
up under the tree-trunk, when suddenly he cowered, and looked up through
the draggled branches at the bridge almost above his head.

"What now?" said the Adjutant, opening his wings uneasily.

"Wait till we see. The wind blows from us to them, but they are not
looking for us--those two men."

"Men, is it? My office protects me. All India knows I am holy." The
Adjutant, being a first-class scavenger, is allowed to go where he
pleases, and so this one never flinched.

"I am not worth a blow from anything better than an old shoe," said the
Jackal, and listened again. "Hark to that footfall!" he went on. "That
was no country leather, but the shod foot of a white-face. Listen
again! Iron hits iron up there! It is a gun! Friend, those heavy-footed,
foolish English are coming to speak with the Mugger."

"Warn him, then. He was called Protector of the Poor by some one no